LE

JSJET is a team, sitting within SP Pol P&A, comprised of service personnel and civil servants. Its role is to conduct Job Evaluation across all three services up to the rank of Brigadier or equivalent. It is based in St. Giles Court, London.

Job Evaluation has been used in the Armed Forces since 1970 and has two simple aims.

Ø To fairly reward the differing levels of responsibility and challenge faced by service personnel in their jobs.

Ø Ensuring broad pay comparability with similar civilian jobs.

To do this all jobs are evaluated against six set factors.

Ø Knowledge, skills & experience

Ø Complexity

Ø Judgement & Decision-making

Ø Use of resources; Communications

Ø Working conditions.

Through an interview process, a Job Description is written by an analyst from JSJET which is then scored by a judging panel comprised of a Colonel or equivalent from each service. That score is combined with the others from that rank in that trade to produce a Whole Trade Score. This data is then used by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body (AFPRB) when making their annual pay recommendations. The AFPRB is an independent body of 9 members appointed by the Prime Minister and Defence Secretary and includes members of the House of Lords, academic figures and business leaders.

1. Purpose and Background.

Job Evaluation (JE) is a system for fairly rewarding your responsibility. It ensures objectivity by assessing job weight using such factors as knowledge, experience, complexity, use of resources and working conditions. The Joint Services Job Evaluation Team (JSJET) carries out the evaluation work across the three Services. JSJET was established in 1970 and comprises WOs from each Service and 3 Heads of Element, (Lieutenant Commander, Major and Squadron Leader). It is led by a Civil Servant and forms part of the Service Personnel Policy division. As part of the JE process all work is judged by a team of judges appointed by each Service at Captain RN, Colonel and Group Captain rank who score every Job Description (JD) individually, and then as a judging panel. The results are used to support Pay 2000. They are also sent to the Office of Manpower Economics for consideration by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body, who use them to make their annual pay recommendations.

2. The Process.

Within the three Services there are over 400 trades. Each trade is normally reviewed every five years. Before the JE of a trade, individual Service Branch Managers/Trade Sponsors (BM/TS) are consulted. They provide Statistics of Coverage covering established posts and detailing the types of employment at all ranks within the trade. Subsequently the BM/TS nominates people for interview and throughout the process they provide specialist advice to JSJET and the Judges.

3. How do JS JET derive their information?

The BM/TS selects service personnel to represent their trade and rank. They may well be representing up to 200 members of their trade and the results will have a direct bearing on rates and scales of pay of that trade for years to come. JE is concerned with 'what you do in your job' and not 'how well you do it'.

Diablo - the identification of differing levels of responsibility within a trade area is entirely consistent with the aims of JE. No-one is saying that a certain rank doesn't work hard.

If you feel hard done by (clearly you do!) spare a thought for those capbadges who have been handed a blanket 'low band' JE, such as RMP (GPD and SIB) - who work every bit as hard as everyone else in the Army and who are currently experiencing a 67% tour commital. Also consider that JSJET rightly rewarded the Inf with blanket 'high band' coverage.

JE is not about hard work alone - it is about consideration of a range of factors - collated from a number of people within your own trade area.

I hope this helps with understanding the JS JET methodology - but I doubt it will help with smoothing your ego!

Old-Salt

I know we have only recently gone into P2K, but I think we still have fundamental flaws in the way that salary is assessed.

The first point is that JSJET works on a points based system, whereby if your trade and rank score highly enough you make the higher range, if not then you are on the lower range. Consequently two very similar trades in different capbadges may be on different pay ranges, with one being just 'past the post' for the higher range and the other just failing to reach the mark. The current explanation of ' oh well, better luck next time' is not really appreciated by people getting paid £5 to £10 per day less for doing almost identical work.

Secondly the amount of work an individual does is not a factor considered by JSJET. As we are on the AGC forum I can safely say that I have spent years witnessing 'teeth arm' colleagues slope off early on a daily basis, and disappear altogether on Wed/Fri afternoons(if not earlier), whilst some other individuals remain at work and complete long hours as a matter of course. However the survey of working patterns influences only the X Factor, which affects all regulars, and does not reward those specifically who put in a lot of hard work as a matter of course in barracks. I accept that on Ops then the teeth arms can have a more dangerous and demanding job, and can rightly expect good money, but those who put in all the effort whilst not on Ops should not be ignored.

LE

You won't get an argument from me about how hard the AGC work! They are consistently the last people home every day - usually hours after everyone has long since departed.

However, I reiterate my point above. It does not consider how hard any of us work - such endeavours are rewarded through different mechanisms, such as promotion D)

I know that the next round of evaluation is due to start in about 12 months or so. Hopefully, the system will have settled down a little and deserving cases will be addressed. My personal view is that in its' original incarnation, JSJET were under considerable pressure to put the Inf on the higher band. THere's nothing wrong with this, as under the JE criteria, Inf do score very highly. However, in the rush to facilitate this, several trade groups were notable in their absence (a variety of RLC trades, most AGC trades, etc).

Let's see what happens next time round - fingers crossed!

PS All this does beg the interesting question (aimed at the longer serving members): if you had known when you joined that you were going to end up on the lower rate, would you still have joined that trade or a different one?

Old-Salt

If I was joining up now I would be learning to fry eggs, or learning how to build bridges.

And with VEng/NecSt our promotion times are slowing down, bringing us more into line with the army average - where then is the incentive for our troops to put in more effort for less reward?

As you say - the next round of JSJET evaluations are fairly crucial to the morale of the SPS branch. Obviously not all ranks will be HR, but even two or three is enough to make a huge difference as the start point at the next rank will be significantly higher. Failure to change the current evaluations will be viewed contemptuously by the corps as a whole, I believe.